1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to vibration damping of a rotor machine, and more specifically to a process and an apparatus for determining a proper mass of a damper ring.
2. Description of the Related Art including information disclosed under 37 CFR 1.97 and 1.98
A rotary machine, such as a small gas turbine engine, may develop rotary dynamic problems due to rotor shaft imbalance that will produce excessive vibration above a certain rotation speed. For this reason, damper rings are used to provide a damper for the rotor to reduce the vibration level to that which will be acceptable and not damage to the rotary machine occurring.
Damper rings produce a damping affect due to the mass of the ring rubbing against the rotating groove in which the ring rides. Computer modeling of damper rings can be done, but the results are not accurate enough. To properly size a damper ring, one would manufacture the damper ring at different masses and then test each damper ring in the rotary machine until one finds that the vibrations are minimal. However, this requires a lot of time and machining to produce the different sizes of damper rings.